Read Online Floods 5 by Colin Thompson - Free Book Online

torch!’ Grusom was still shaking his head over the heinous crime that had been committed. ‘That’s it. It’s time for the magic beans.’ He got out his tin opener. ‘This calls for the beans with the extra thick tomato sauce.’
    He threw a handful of magic beans in the air and nothing happened. This was because the extra thick tomato sauce was so thick that all the beans stayed stuck to his hands. He took a deep breath, flexed his muscles and threw as hard as he could. All the beans stuck on the ceiling.
    â€˜Interesting,’ he said. ‘That’s never happened before … but then I’ve never had a corpse stolenfrom my examination table before, either.’
    Several magic beans fell down the front of Avid’s top and even when Grusom called them to heel, they refused to come back. Mysteriously, the rest of the beans fell on the floor and spelled out the words:
    My first is in nothing
    My next is in ice
    My third is in …
    Ahh, need more beans …
    â€˜So what do we do now, boss?’ Avid asked. ‘I mean, without a body, we have no proof there’s even been a murder.’
    â€˜We have witnesses who saw the body,’ said Grusom. ‘Dozens of them.’
    â€˜I don’t think we can count on any of them,’ said Avid. ‘I mean, they’re all witches and wizards. We’re outsiders here.’
    â€˜True, but we’ll still put out the wanted posters for all the Flood kids,’ said Grusom. ‘I’m sure theyknow more than they’re telling us.’
    Grusom tried to examine the room with his very big Forensic Special Investigator’s Magnifying Glass, but the Hearse Whisperer had turned it inside out 30 so it now made everything look very small and an extremely long way away.
    â€˜The potted plant’s gone too,’ said Avid, not realising the geranium had been the Hearse Whisperer in disguise.
    They spent ten minutes looking through all the cupboards and drawers in case the body had somehow got into one of them, which of course it hadn’t, but when something as totally unexpected as a body vanishing into thin air happens, it’s the sort of thing you do. They even looked in the corridor outside the room, in the waste-paper basket and the ice compartment of the fridge.
    The body was not there.

That evening as they hid in the graveyard deciding what to do next, Winchflat told the others what he had discovered. His nose hairs had tingled for a reason, and now he knew what it was. The Hearse Whisperer had found them.
    They all knew about the Hearse Whisperer. Mordonna had told them how evil the Hearse Whisperer was and how Mordonna’s father, King Quatorze, had sent the evil spy after them when she had eloped with their father. It had been an exciting, scary bed-time story, made even more exciting and scary because it was true.
    Mordonna had told them all they must be always on their guard so as not to give away their hiding place at Acacia Avenue, for the Hearse Whisperer was the kind of creature who would never give up until she had found them.
    To protect them all, Winchflat had built a Hearse-Whisperer-Early-Warning-Device. Using no more than a single speck of the Hearse Whisperer’s dandruff that Mordonna had picked out of the ear of Ooze, one of her father’s spies, 31 an old mobile phone, three tonnes of broccoli and several small insects, Winchflat set to work. The first version was so big it had to be towed around in a trailer, but in the same way that the first computers were bigger than a house and are now so small they can fit in a watch, each version of the detector got smaller and smaller until it fitted into a button.
    â€˜Brilliant,’ said Nerlin. ‘We can each have one sewn on our clothes so we’ll always know when we’re in danger.’
    â€˜Except when we don’t have any clothes on,’ said Morbid. Silent sniggered.
    â€˜You could always sew it onto